It was a rare Election Day without an election here in Vermont, unless you live in a place like Colchester that decided to build a new police station.

All of you politically astute people out there must have been tuning into votes elsewhere, however, and drawing conclusions of some sort or another. I say unto you, share your thoughts:

- Across the lake, New Yorkers decided on the Democrat over the Conservative for Congress. It is the first time since the Civil War era that the district hasn't sent a Republican to Washington.

What happened there?

Were voters turned off by the out-of-district push for the Conservative that drove the Republican out of the race? (One ad making fun of how the D.C./Albany power brokers chose the Democrat and the Republican candidates in the special election mistakenly referred to the Capitol in Albany as the Statehouse, thus making the backers of that ad who supported the Conservative sound very much like out-of-staters themselves.)

- Over in Maine, voters defeated a same-sex marriage law that the Legislature had passed and the governor signed. Does that put a damper on same-sex marriage efforts in N.J. and N.Y. and elsewhere?

- Meanwhile, Maine voters decided to legalize medical marijuana.

- In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg seems to have lost some of his bloom. A gazillion dollars spent on the campaign and he nearly didn't survive.

- In New Jersey and Virginia, Republicans swept into the governor's seats, a move being regarded across the country as a sign of a backlash against Democrats.

Do you agree?

- Terri Hallenbeck

Labels: medical marijuana, same-sex marriage, vermont politics